ON THE ROAD - Gregory Ford was sitting outside, enjoying the sun and checking out his cell phone during a 30-minute food stop at a TravelAmerica truck stop near Zionsville, Ind., 20 minutes north of Indianapolis.

"I thought I was going to be riding with chickens because it was so cheap," the 20-year-old Chicagoan said.

"It" was the bright blue Megabus that sat idling in the parking lot, waiting for passengers to reboard and head down the road to Cincinnati.

Mega-WHAT?

Megabus. It’s an idea born in the United Kingdom and little more than a month old in the United States, based on the concept of express, intercity motor coach travel at dirt-cheap rates.

Of course one-man’s dirt cheap is another man’s wallet-sucking nightmare. Not this. I rode a modern, clean, uncrowded bus the 300 miles from Chicago to Cincinnati for $20.

Greyhound, the "It’s such a comfort to take the bus ..." people, charged me $50 for the return trip.

If I’d flown, the cheapest round-trip flight I could find the day I booked my Megabus ticket (six days in advance) was indeed wallet-sucking, to the tune of $705. Not a good tune.

Even if you drove your own car, got 25 mpg and paid $2.50 a gallon for gas (yeah, right), you’d be out $30 for the one-way trip.

Ford, by the way, booked earlier than me and paid $8 one way and $15 the other for his weekend visit to see friends. And in his first visit to the Megabus.com Web site, when he wasn’t sure this wasn’t a scam, he could have gone on a promotional fare that was an amazing one buck each way.

Any of those fares would leave Ford plenty of money for some chicken at the truck stop Popeye’s.

But no chickens riding on the bus.

Eleanor Zarnowiecke from LaGrange, Ill., and Stephanie Shirley from Cincinnati - on the opposite ends of the age scale at 87 and 21 - agreed with Ford that Megabus rocks.

Zarnowiecke liked the price, of course, and the convenience of catching her ride right outside Union Station’s entrance on the east side of Canal Street. It would, she said, make it easy for this and future visits to her kids and grandkids in Cincinnati and Minneapolis.

With Chicago as the hub, Megabus also goes to and from Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio.

Like Ford, Shirley also delayed booking early so she could check out whether Megabus was legit. That cost her a $9.50 round trip. But she wasn’t complaining, and comparing it to other bus lines, she ventured,

"It’s a lot better. It’s a lot nicer. It’s cleaner, and there’s less people, but I’m sure it will pick up," Shirley said.

No complaints?

"Not yet."

But wouldn’t flying be a lot faster than the six-hour Megabus or seven-hour Greyhound trip?

"It would take longer in Cincinnati," Shirley said, "because you have to get to the airport early and then you fly and you have to have someone pick you up. At O’Hare it’s kind of far from where my friend lives, so it’s probably a lot easier to take the bus - and cheaper."

Because Megabus is new and still not well known, we left Chicago with only 17 passengers, so everyone had room to spread out.

Our only stops were a five- to 10-minute rest area break about two hours out of Chicago, that 30-minute food stop at Travel-America and a two-minute stop in Indianapolis to let off a few passengers.

We arrived at the final stop in Cincinnati half an hour earlier than scheduled, so our trip was just six hours - not a whole lot more than if you drove it yourself.

On the trip back, Greyhound stopped first in Indianapolis - scheduled for a half-hour but stretching into nearly an hour because of some seating problems on the by-then-full bus. (At least one person in Indy with a ticket didn’t get to board.) Then there were stops in Lafayette, Gary, Hammond and 95th Street before unloading at the terminal on Harrison Street.

Our scheduled seven-hour trip came in at just over that figure.

Overall, the Megabus experience was fine, though there was something wrong with the latch on the toilet (the driver announced that as we left Chicago), so it couldn’t be used. But the longest time toilet-to-toilet was about 2½ hours, so it wasn’t a bladder-breaker.

And, something that’s not really a problem for most folks, but you can book Megabus only online. Greyhound sells tickets online, by phone or at a terminal.

And speaking of terminals, Megabus doesn’t have ’em. In Chicago there’s just a small Megabus sign in that bus-loading area outside Union Station. Same setup in Indianapolis and Cincinnati, though no Union Station.

The no-terminal thing is one way they keep down their costs.

And that brings up the No. 1 question from anyone who hears about Megabus: How can they sell seats that cheap?

Well, besides the terminal thing, there’s minimal staffing needed - the driver and a woman at the Chicago stop who checked the confirmation info passengers had printed out.

Megabus is part of Coach USA - which runs scheduled services as well as charters, sightseeing and tours - so the coaches, maintenance workers, etc. were already in place.

Dale Moser, president and chief operating officer of Coach USA, says the idea of cheap bus service "isn’t a new concept. It’s been implemented into the bus industry from discount airlines like Southwest. ... It’s based on volume" once it becomes more well known.

Moser expects much of Megabus’ business to be round trips (though buying a round trip isn’t necessarily a better deal than one way) and come from people in the eight outlying cities who choose Chicago as a destination to sample its sports, culture, restaurants and nightlife.

Sitting in my bargain seat, high above the traffic on the Dan Ryan, letting someone else do the driving, got me to thinking.

It really can be a comfort to take the bus and ...

Whoops, that’s that other company.